Power Exchange
by Bond.Jane
Summary: The obligatory tag for The Daredevil in the Mould. Rated M for language and content. Walk right on by if you are under 18 or easily offended.
1. Power Exchange

**Author's note: It's been such a long time since I felt like writing. It took this devastated Booth and **_**that**_** look in Brennan's face to make it happen. And words of encouragement from BandBFan.**

**.**

**Note two: Thank you to my wonderful beta MickeyBoggs for the title and all the usual kindness. **

**Much love**

**Jane**

.

.

.

He was not a drunk. But he was very, very drunk.

The significance of the number three just swirled and twirled and danced in his head. It bounced around like a ball inside his skull and made it hurt. Becca, Bones and Hannah. The holy trinity of pain.

At one, you just think _tough luck_. At two, you look for the connection. At three, you stop looking and start blaming. And Bones walked in when he was ready to blame. And surely not himself. Been there, done that, got the t shirt to prove it. And the book and the DVD set and the all the merchandising.

And she was just sitting there, ready to take whatever he had to dish out. And it was so damn easy.

He could hear her heart pounding, pounding, pounding. Like a sparrow caught in a net that knows there's was no way out. Waiting to die.

Just like he had felt that day a year ago when he had opened himself to her.

He had looked back. Many times. The booze excused it. They say you shouldn't. The dude that turned into a statue of salt sure as fuck knew that. But when there is nowhere to go, no future to look forward, what can you do but look back?

It was mean. But he was just drunk enough to feel vindicated when he laid down the law - _just partners_ - and he heard her heart break just as loudly as if it had been made of crystal.

Screw women, screw loving them.

He was up for the screw part, though. He wanted to literally fuck someone. He wanted to spread the pain.

He downed one more shot.

The sound of shattered crystal faded.

That was the new Booth. Take it or fuckin' leave.

Yeah. He was good with that.

He was done offering.

Now he would do some taking.

.

.

It was easy as sunshine.

When the bar closed and the lights dimmed and the bartender told them to go home, he just turned around. She wanted to stay? Fine and dandy.

"Come."

Somehow, he did not want to say her name.

It's easier to hurt someone when you don't know them.

He hailed a cab. Held out a hand to her.

"Come."

Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

.

.

He was out of the cab before the thing stopped. He tossed the money at the driver and walked into the building. He did not wait for her.

He considered that her opportunity to walk away. She did that pretty well, anyway, just give her half a chance.

He jogged up the steps to his place and left the door open. Somehow, he just knew that she would be there when he turned.

He walked to his room dropping clothes as he went along. He was deliberate only with his gun. As he turned, she was there, vacant, expectant.

"Come"

And sure as shit, she took the hand he held.

.

.

Hannah's things had gone as if she'd never been.

He blamed Bones for that too. He was drunk. If he'd been sober, he'd have been able to point exactly how that was, but for now, the feeling was sufficient. As sufficient as the memory of his heart freezing inside his chest as if the thing would never be able to beat again when she had stopped that kiss.

The anger built in waves. He took the scarf at her neck and pulled her coat off, none too gently.

"We're gonna have sex now", his hands molded around her ass and pulled her to him. "More than once". Her name rolled around in his mouth but he bit down on it violently. "So if you want to leave, now is too late." He ground himself against her, the anger building as he inhaled her soft scent. He pulled her shirt off, ripping buttons that he didn't bother undoing.

Brennan gasped.

The sound spurred him on. He avoided looking at her.

Kneeling, he took her pants down the same way you chuck off unwanted parts of fruit.

Her scent was inebriating. He kissed the swath of fabric that covered her.

Brennan run her fingers through his hair. He pulled her hands away.

No, no touching.

He was doing all the taking tonight.

He pushed her on her back and parted her legs. The ridiculously small piece off fabric stood between him and her. Story of his life. All the barriers between him and his women were fragile like silk.

He made a grab for it and halted when the soft whiteness hit him in his residual decency. Her innocence.

The he did his best to remember that she was anything but, that she had screwed any guy moving except him and he just pulled it aside in the urge to taste her.

God, the taste of her.

It was sweet and honey-like and he just wanted it all over him, because that would stand between him and Hannah and him and Becca and him and the Bones that he loved.

His tongue darted back and forth and her hands grappled the sheets close to his head.

As she thrashed, he reveled in his power. When he'd had his fill, he moved up.

He claimed her breasts, her neck, her shoulders with small viscous bites.

When she called out his name, he told her simply NO.

She went silent.

He turned her around flat on her stomach.

Did not worry about being gentle. Wouldn't.

Where he had for years laid his hand in protection, he felt nothing, not a hint of connection. He was alone. The loneliest he had ever been

Not even the small of her back offered comfort.

He pulled her legs apart and dived on inside her.

He fought the homecoming sensation every step of the way. It was nothing but lies. Turned out, Bones was right about all the chemical crap being all that was love was all about. Loneliness was as good a bond as any.

It was just that scent of hers, that softness of the skin on her back against his chest or the way she bit her lip and remained silent. It got him mad.

Damned stoicism of the woman. He was hurting her. He was demanding that she give him what she had given every Joe, Dick and Harry for free. He was forcing himself on her. It was only right that she cried and complained. There was nothing. She was just there, just like she had been there when he talked about Hannah and his love for Hannah and all that jazz. Why didn't she bleed when he hurt her?

.

.

The thing about sex?

It's a weapon.

He wielded it against HannahBeccaBones. He punished them all in that one rough, violent, careless fuck.

He hurt them all.

The took his revenge on them all.

Screwed sense of accomplishment that they had not wanted his love and could all stand happily his body and his sex and his sweat. His flesh. No one wanted more from him.

.

.

He came. Violently. Not so much out of pleasure in the flesh but out of the pleasure in the punishment. As if he had finally dished out some of his own.

And when he did, he got up and locked himself in bathroom, cleaned up, showered. Cooled off the drunken haze.

He looked in the mirror.

There was something odd about his reflection, as if the guy in the mirror was someone he didn't quite know. Wasn't quite sure he wanted to live with.

Screw thinking about it. Had never done him an ounce of good.

.

.

He grabbed water from the fridge and drank, drank drank until he felt sated. From now on, this would be him: drink until he had enough, take until he was full, think of himself alone. His dad seem to have done alright living by that law of nature.

He felt free.

Free from himself.

And wasn't that great.

He turned the bottle in his hand, considered the movements of his muscles.

Heard the soft rustling in his bedroom.

Too bad that freedom felt more like a prison than an horizon.

.

.

He walked into the bedroom.

The fire had cooled inside him. There was only a cold detachment as she pulled the sheet around her chest as if she feared him.

"Sit."

He was surprised at the blind obedience.

He had braced for recrimination, for shouting, even for her running.

That vulnerability in her eyes left him feeling empty, like when the water draws back from the shore before tsunami. When the wave hit, it was with destructive violence.

"I'm not done."

.

.

The sheet dropped from hands and she was naked before him, his fingers marked on her shoulders, his teeth imprinted on her neck.

He closed his eyes and plowed on.

He. Was. Not. Done. Taking.

.

.

He moved inside her like a home he had just come back to.

He hated the feeling.

He didn't want to know her. Or care. Or have a history with her.

His stare was fixed on the wall in front of him but world seemed, with each plunge inside her, to reduce itself to its simplest expression: Bones. His hand found that spot at the small of her back. Rubbed that spot against his will and better judgment.

She cried out his name, a breathless sound ripped from her throat and when her hands gripped convulsively at his back, he did not push her away.

"I love you," she sighed, more like she was talking to herself.

He didn't come.

He couldn't.

.

.

He lay on his side, facing away from her. Her breathing was soft and even.

He was wide awake, just staring at the insides of his eyelids. He made himself breathe slow and even in the pretense he was asleep.

"I'm sorry, Booth." The words were a whisper. Could have been only a breeze in the air. "I'm sorry I hurt you"

.

.

He woke up when she was ready to leave, coat and scarf draped over her arm, shoes in her hand, moving like a cat.

"What, no after play? Coffee?"

Booth was happy he had found some venom in his voice.

"I... it's late, I should be in the lab..."

"Make us coffee."

What was it with him? He should just let her go. The faster she left, the faster he could go on the rest of his life.

She put her things down on the sofa and went into the kitchen.

She made coffee and toast and laid it out on the table for him.

"I never though you were the doormat type."

Her shoulders hunched before she turned around.

She held her chin up.

"I owe you."

He grabbed the hot coffee and burned his mouth on the hot liquid. The pain was nothing new.

"Yeah, you did. Consider it paid as of last night."

Her arms dropped to her sides and she stood in his kitchen, an oak sapling facing a hurricane.

"I love you, Booth."

He paused over his coffee.

"I do. I love you. I apologize for the bluntness, but it's true."

"Fat lot of good it did me." And he turned away from her, sipping his coffee has if he had just heard it was going to rain and he had the umbrella in his hand.

.

.

.

.

Her heart was steady and her steps firm when she walked out of Booth's apartment. When he laid down the law at the bar, she knew he was going to break her heart. She also knew she was going to let him. Newton's first law of physics: for every action, there is an opposite reaction. She had refused him, hurt him. This now was only to be expected. And nothing ever came for free. That was her own first law.

She had decided, in a split second, at the very moment of choice when he gave her those two choices, that she was going to give him the only thing she had never given anyone else: the power to hurt her.

As she hit the street and the cold air of the just out sun, she was was reminded of the girl with the iron boots and how she'd had to walk her iron boots worn until she deserved again the love she'd betrayed.

Each step she took away from him, she hoped, would bring them closer. And hope, though fragile, was as good as it got.

She would wear her heavy iron boots and she would wear them down and away. And she would do so gladly.

She would wait and she would take what was offered.

She would wait ten lifetimes over.

.

.

.

.

Booth put down his cup and got rid of the bed linen and pillows and tooth brushes and everything that had been left in that room, stripping it to the bare walls and furniture.

He opened the windows and let smell of sex out of and the fresh air in.

He wanted a brand new start, a beginning.

He wanted a do over.

But that wasn't likely to happen, was it?

Give someone the power to hurt you and they will. And he'd do well to remember that.

As it was, he was done.

He put on fresh clothes, badge and gun and walked into the morning.

Brennan's scent lingered in air when he sat in the car. It was all over him, on his skin, in his mouth, in his brain.

There was a basic difference between the three of them, he realized: Bones was the only one that was always there.

And as his body remembered her, the feel of her skin under him, of her juices in his mouth, her whispered confession as she came around him, his breath caught in his chest, as if his soul wanted out of him. He felt too stupid to breathe.

Oh shit.

What have you done?


	2. A bird and a fish

**Author's note:**

**Note one: Thank you to MickeyBoggs, wonderful beta, without whom, this text would be a garbled mess.**

**Note two: Thank you also to Cindy, partner in crime.**

**Note three: Thank, finally, (does this look like an Oscar acceptance speech yet?) to everyone who reviewed, who made me like writing more on this story.**

**Lots of love**

**Jane**

.

.

Overall, there was hurt and anger.

Under that, shame.

The outside world was shiny and clean and loud. He sat in his car, huddled in his clothes, in his sorrow. He needed a drink, a stiff one. Since when was that such a bad idea?

The car arrived at the Hoover, his mind didn't. It was still somewhere yesterday, some time last night.

.

.

He pushed through the day because that's what grown men do. They go out, they pay their bills with sweat and life goes on. Goes through them.

He did not call Brennan.

He didn't call her the day after nor the day after that.

Hannah either, though he had plenty of missed calls. What else was there to say? Here, come and have me? Use me for a little while longer?

.

.

He had sat in the dark of his days, bottle in hand, the poor man's painkiller.

BeccaBonesHannah.

He nursed his own sentimental wounds. The anger and the sadness were a physical thing, a sweat that ran out of his pores, a constant buzzing that did not let him sleep, a vibration of the skin that never allowed him rest. He longed for peace, but dwelt in the quiet noise.

.

.

Hannah was further from his thoughts with each day. He could practically measure it. No longer did he smell her in the air or expect to see her coming in at the end of the day. He didn't buy enough groceries for two and had stopped taking home the little cupcakes that she liked or the fruit she enjoyed. He was on the mend, he could tell. The hurt of the first few weeks subsided and gave way to bitterness. And that was a good taste in his mouth. So much better than the fake sugariness of the deception or the salt of sadness.

When he closed his eyes, the inside of his lids was a map of the bruises on Brennan's body growing darker with the each passing hour. When he ran his tongue through his lips, the taste was that of Brennan's body, only all the more bitter as the days went by, and when he touched the poker chip in his pocket, it was the softness of her skin, all the harder as the weeks rolled by.

Inside, the anger and the hurt were like white noise, a poorly tuned radio or perhaps a scratched record. He longed for peace.

.

.

He took days off. Sickness leave first. Annual leave after. When he ran out of days, he simply went back, because that's what grown men do.

He rode his desk from nine to five. Drank himself stupid in the evening. Shaved and went back to work in the morning.

The days, the weeks, the months passed him by and did not leave a mark.

His step bounced off the earth as if he was miscalculating each one, uncertain of where it was safe to land. His shoulders hunched a little as if the weight on them was pushing him down. He was in between: the weightlessness of not wanting and the weight of what was lost.

Somehow, during that self destruction path, there had been a fierce satisfaction, an almost joyfulness in the sheer annihilation of all that he had been.

.

.

And then he found himself at Brennan's door. Ah, yes, he was drunk. Very drunk.

This might not hurt as much after all. He owed her an apology. Maybe then he could stop seeing the ghosts of that godforsaken night.

All he needed was absolution.

He was about to knock when the door opened.

Brennan stood valiant beside it. He waited for the payback shoe to drop.

He waited in vain.

"Come, Booth."

The air became solid inside his lungs and his legs were twigs straining to keep in him upright.

.

.

"You're drunk again."

"Wrong. I'm still drunk."

"OK."

"I'm not a drunk."

"I know."

"Don't patronize me."

"I don't do that." She moved her hand to him. "Please come in". She studied him. Her eyes roamed his body, lingered on his face.

He had missed that honest gaze of hers. And then he mentally punched himself. _Don't you fuckin' dare go there again._

He stared at himself through her analytical yet compassionate eyes. And he felt nothing. There wasn't enough of him to feel, so he felt nothing. There was only white noise. He was numb. And that had nothing to do with the liquor. It was just the numbness that is left when you have lost everything there is to lose. And given the circumstances, numb was not at all a bad way to be.

.

.

He went past her without taking her hand.

He could do this.

It was the last tie to sever.

Get going with the apology. Get off your ass and move on.

"Look, I..." He couldn't get it out past his teeth. She moved to the sofa and sat. She was slight. Slighter than he remembered, thinner. But there was a light coming from her, a light of strength, _no, scratch that_, a light of _purpose _about her. It unnerved him.

He chose his syntax carefully.

"Do you have anything to drink?"

"I'll make some coffee."

"Don't bother." There was nothing wrong with the syntax, but the words came like snarls. The longer he stood in her apartment, the longer he was unable to push the apology into the air, the more rabid he became.

Brennan produced a bottle of scotch and shot glasses. She sat at the kitchen counter and filled them up.

.

.

They drank in silence, a thing heavy in the air.

"How are you, Booth?"  
"Just peachy, thank you."

Brennan squared her shoulders as if she was bracing for impact.

"Look, I owe you an apology... for that night."

"No, you don't."

Booth looked at her, not really wanting to see.

"You don't even ask what about".

He thought about the markings on her body, her taste still in his mouth,

Brennan thought about two choices.

"Anything at all."

He snorted.

.

.

Mistakes are payable in blood, sweat and tears.

He had one hell of a payment plan. He'd been paying dues all his life.

.

.

"Will you come back?"

To what? Partnership? Work? Himself?

_I'm here._ "Not sure." _It hurts._ "I have things to sort through." _I hurt you._ "Yeah..." _Just let me wallow for little while longer._

.

.

"I'm sorry about Hannah."  
"Yeah, well..."

He was too. His tattered heart could attest. But. Under the white noise there was something that looked suspiciously like relief.

"She's sorry she hurt you!"

"Yeah, she's sorry, you're sorry. Everybody is. Can we change the subject, please?" The anger built again.

"Booth... I…"  
"I mean, what is it with people anyway? How come you're friends with her?"  
"I won't if it bothers you."

"It doesn't." Damn whiskey was like water. "You know what? It does. Why would she call you that night? Did you compare notes? Did you? Had a few laughs?"

"It's not like that Booth. She was worried. She thought you might need a friend."

"A friend? And she goes and chooses you?"

"We were friends, right? Partners?"

Booth rubbed his face, vigorously. It hadn't turned out like that at all, had it?

"Fuck."

He noted her hand squeezing the dainty glass.

"Fuck."

.

.

"Why are you so angry?"

"I'm not, OK?"

Brennan gave him a sideways glance. It made him laugh.

"OK, I am. And the more I think about it, the angrier I get."

"I thought you'd be sad."

"Oh?"

She shook her head.

"Who am I to analyze?"

"True. You couldn't analyze a fish."

"That's not strictly true..."

"Whatever."

He took the bottle and the glass and went to the sofa, needing space between their bodies, because her scent was just so damn appealing that he wanted to jump her. There was something about that white pajama of hers.

"Look..." He sighed. "I'm angry because... you know, it's just easier to be angry."

Brennan left her glass on the counter and sat next to him. She missed the proximity between their two bodies acutely. She had been missing it since he had let her out of his Hannah smelling apartment.

"At me?"

"Yeah. You and her and me. Seriously, what is it with me? Why is it that what I offer is not enough?"

.

.

Her hands slid palm down on her legs, smoothing the pajama, soothing herself.

"It's not you, Booth."

"And this is not fiction. Saying that can work in a book, but not here."

"It's not you, Booth." She sighed. "Maybe that's not exactly accurate. It is you, because you did not see that Hannah did not want to get married. That she did not want the same things you do."

"I wanted her to change for me."

"You always say that people don't change."

Booth raised his glass in a mock toast.

"Yep..."

"Look, I'm better with science..."

"No, by all means..."

"It's not dissimilar to two perpendicular lines. You intersected in a moment in time. And then you follow your own infinity."

"That makes me feel a lot better, thanks..."

"It should. It does not diminish what you felt for each other."

He wanted to ask _what about us._

Instead, he just filled his glass again and looked at her hands, serene in her lap. And here he was, feeling like he was drowning and all he wanted to do was scream, scream, scream.

Maybe they were two parallel lines, running together, so close, condemned never to touch. The scream started at the back of his throat and stayed there, throbbing.

"I did love her..."

"I know."

.

.

"What's your excuse?"

Her eyebrow did the little question mark thing he was so very fond of.

"You didn't want me. You know? I laid out my heart for you. Put my cards on the table. And you walked away from me. All I want to know is why. That? I'm mad at that Bones. And then you come with a change of heart. I'm mad at that too."

She was seating ramrod straight. He had that seen _that _recognition in her eyes before, back at the bar that night. All roads went back to _that_ night.

He downed one more shot.

"I'm so mad at you Bones."

"Because I had a change of heart?"

"Because you told me about it."

"Oh..."

"Because I could go on happy with my life. I had moved on. You should have let me go. I waited. I waited for you Bones. You had no right to tell me."

"Why?"

"Because..." His hand abused his hair once more. "Because..." _Oh this might just hurt._ "Because that means that I was wrong, OK?"

"You're entitled to be wrong."

"No, stop, OK! I've known you for six years, Bones. Loved you for most of that time. Waited for you with the patience of a tree. I thought... I hoped..." Man this conversation was going nowhere good. "I believed that you would..."

"I wasn't ready, Booth. And I was terrified I would hurt you. And that's exactly what I did. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I hurt you like that."

"You and me both, Bones. You and me both."

.

.

"Is it too late, Booth?"

"I made mistakes with you. Too many."

"No... I..."

"Look, we don't want the same things. We didn't want the same things a year ago and we still don't want them now. I... go with me on this one, Bones, but I've had it, you know? I'm not up for another rejection, another heartbreak. I'll take the blame for this one, but I won't repeat my mistakes. I'm sorry, OK?"

"Booth... I"  
"You and me Bones? We're different. You want your travels, I want my roots on the floor. You want freedom, I just want to belong somewhere..."

"I love you."

"I'm sure you do. But like I said, it's never done me a shred of good."

"I can change Booth." _I have changed._

"And I just want to grow old, Bones. People don't change. We just want to believe they do." Though he was desperate to believe. For her, he actually wanted to believe. "A bird and fish may fall in love, but where will they live?"

.

.

Her leg moved first, settling under her and giving her purchase to move. Then her body rotated and faced him. The hair at the nape of his neck vibrated the warning. And he could have done something about it. Plenty. But the blood in his veins slowed and the white noise faded and when her lips touched his, soft, so soft, there was peace. And he felt like he was taking the first deep breath and that the numb was receding and there was just... peace of body. He didn't want anything disturb that peace.

"I love you, Booth."

Her hand slid down his face. He left a trace of peace on his skin, like a scent or a perfume. A single stretch of smooth peace.

How long had his fingers been tangled with hers, as if they had been made together like that?

She was a bird, he was a fish.

The million dollar question was if he still had it in him to sacrifice everything he wanted, everything he believed to hold on to the belief of her.

Scar tissue was a barren thing and nothing grew out of it as far as knew.

.

.

He walked out her door and felt acutely alone even before he stepped out of the apartment. The anger and the loneliness were a well where he had fallen, the bricks too slippery to climb. It was easier to just sit there at the very rock bottom. He was drowning and he wanted to scream. Colorblind. Raw.

Instead, he just walked away. Alone.


	3. Body of evidence

Author's note: Ok, this is it. Thank yous to the two usual suspects, MickeyBoggs and Cindy.

Love all around,

Jane.

Body of evidence

.

.

He couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned and sleep eluded him still.

All of it, all of it was his fault. And all roads led to Bones.

Her bruised body, her refusal to work with the FBI, her declaration of love. He had made himself this pathetic ass wipe that she had felt compelled to tell him a commiseration lie. Hannah leaving.

All. His. Damn. Fault.

.

.

He went to work. He went back home. Ate and did all that was reasonable for a man to do. And then, he hauled his ass to Bones' apartment and sat in the shadows waiting for that pathetic need to sit by her to go away.

He didn't recognize himself. Who was this person, so angry, so pathetic. So damned lost.

The knew one thing alone: she made it better.

.

.

The need did not subside. He would have squashed it with his fingers if it was something tangible. Why her? So many women out there. So many that hadn't seen him at his worse. So many that hadn't rejected him.

He marched upstairs, demanding from himself to break that spell.

.

.

She didn't smile anymore when she saw him. She used to. She used to answer his calls with a smile. Now she just stood there, bracing herself for a storm.

"What, you're not happy to see me? Go figure, huh?" And that thought, that he was inconvenientto her bothered him.

.

.

"I am happy to see you. But you're still angry."

"Yeah, well, deal with it, alright?"

.

.

"I'm hungry." He didn't want to make it sound like a petulant child.

"Me too." She smiled. What was it with her smile that disarmed him? He was going down the rabbit hole again. "Do you want to order in?"

And it was just like before. It shouldn't be.

"Yeah..."

She had the number for the Thai place on her speed dial since they first started having meals together.

And she'd always place the same order. The permanence disconcerted him. He wanted that. He missed that. But it was a lie of an intimacy.

.

.

They ate. They drank. They talked about trivial things. He wasn't up for much more.

When he sat there, in that pretty apartment, when she sat next to him, that volubility of the molecules in his body was less like a fever, the noise was less like a mob. The scream that had taken residence at the back of his throat was muted.

There was peace.

Her fingers often procured his. He often rubbed them just to make sure they were truly there, lodged between his, part of his landscape.

She shifted in her seat and moved slowly, approached slowly. There was nothing coy about it. He knew she was going to kiss him, knew he was going to let her. Knew he craved it. Though he shouldn't.

His eyes were wide open, captive to hers.

The kiss was soft.

Slight.

Light.

Her hand on his face.

Her heartbeat slow, steady.

And there was silence and peace again.

There was air to breathe again, even if his lungs were busy with the kiss.

"I love you, Booth."

"You keep saying that."

"Yes."

.

.

He stood outside her apartment in the dark. Waiting to understand what was different. Yeah, he was still angry. Still sad too.

But the peace of body lasted longer.

.

.

He woke up sober, saved, showered. Ate because he was hungry. Went to work because he made a difference.

Walked steadier, firmer, like he knew his place in the world.

Walked out of the office and went home. And found himself outside Brennan's building.

They ordered food, ate and drank.

Talked about trivial things because he still wasn't up for more.

She kissed him and he said good night.

She said "I love you".

Every night.

.

.

He woke up and shaved because it felt clean and fresh. Ate with appetite and went to work because he was good at it.

Walked his firm steps, sure of where he was going.

Got in the car and went home.

He knocked on Brennan's door.

They ate and drank and talked about trivial things. The scream at the back of his throat was going nowhere fast. Trivial was all he could manage. His heart was hiding away. And he was OK with that. Not happy. Just OK. Fine.

She kissed him and he said goodbye.

She said "I love you."

.

.

Every night he stood outside her apartment, taking stock.

The anger. Check.

The sadness. Check.

The shame. Check.

The noise. Check.

The loneliness.

The drowning.

There was peace as well. As long as she was there, as long as she renewed it. Like a medicine that you have to take regularly.

It just wasn't the same as being healthy, was it?

.

.

He woke up and got dressed, ate and worked, drove to Brennan and did all the things he usually did.

One of these days, he would stop paying attention to those things.

One of these days they wouldn't be so important. He would be thinking of other things, not so concerned about the one foot in front of the other routine.

There would be things he would be thinking about while he performed those tasks. They would stop being the pleasure of doing them because of the way they feel, and begin to be the things you have to do in between that and which you love.

He couldn't wait for that day.

.

.

He knocked and let himself in.

The take way boxes were already on the table and the wine was already open, breathing.

"Bones?"

He got no reply.

His throat closed a little, his molecules got agitated at her absence. His sixth sense prickled as if trouble had arrived, just not yet announced itself.

"Bones?"

"I'll be right out."

He moved through the apartment gingerly. Bathroom door open, kitchen empty, it left only her bedroom. He knocked gently on her door, though he felt uncomfortable with the geography, and pushed the door slightly, She was OK. She was OK. She was OK.

And hiding something from him, her back to the door.  
"I'll be right there, Booth."

"You OK, Bones?"

"Of course." Then why wasn't she turning? "Go ahead, pour the wine."

"Sure". He almost moved. He wanted to. "Do you need a hand?"

"No. Just get started before it gets cold."

"Bones." Moth to a flame.

He moved into the room.

"Booth, I'll be right there" Her voice rang alarm like a till ran purchases. Her back was still turned to him.

"Temperance?" She inhaled sharply.

"Booth, I_" His hand on her shoulder. His hand pulling her.

"Look at me." He wished he had left the bedroom when she told him to.

But if you break the egg, no way you're putting it back together.

Her eyes were red and tired and wet.

She was worrying a tissue in her hand, trying to make it disappear.

Clearing all the signals from him. Though he made good note of them all.

His body acted faster than his brain. He pulled her to him.

"God, Bones, shhhhh"

He actually rocked her. "Shhhh". His head dipped into her neck and his chest expanded to let give her more space to burrow into.

During that embrace, sometime, it became as much about comfort for her as healing for him.

As if this was his sole fate in life.

.

.

"What happened?"

No sound, not even a murmur.

"Bones? Did anyone hurt you?" The thought alone made him go homicidal.

"No, Booth. I'm OK... Really, I_"

"Bones..." The tone was pleading and it brought forth the tears she had been fighting since she had looked at the clock and found it was time to order the food. "Don't lie to me."

Slowly, he slid her to the bed and knelt in front of her.

She couldn't hide anything, not when he searched her eyes for the truth.

"What is it?"

Her hand did a furious job of rubbing at the moisture she couldn't hide.

"Why don't we get some dinner now? It's getting cold."

His index hooked under her chin and lifted her face to him. Level like that, she lost the battle.

"I miss you." He strained to hear it; it came out faded and throaty.

"I'm right here, Bones."

She nodded, because marshaling the words through her sore tight throat was like giving birth.

"No... what we did, Hannah and I and Becca, it broke something," her hand hovered over his heart, "here."

Brennan stopped and took a deep breath. She had to or she would pull the weepy routine she hated so much.

"And I thought I knew what to do. I thought I could make it better for you. That if I just gave you time and if I just stood here and showed you that I'm not going anywhere and that I..."

.

.

Booth wanted her to stop. This was his thing. This should be his thing alone. His mistakes, is moronic behavior. Not her sins.

He wanted her to stop feeling this sad, this... overwhelmed.

It was just that the man in him wanted to hear this. The man in him wanted the certainty that came with her hurt.

She wasn't wrong. She was just tired of the wait. And that, God knew, he could relate to.

"I thought that if I showed you I love you, that I could.. make it better for you... Because it's not true, you know?"  
"What's not true, Bones?"

"That women don't want what you have to offer. It's not true. You have predicated that on very wrong examples." The sigh that came from her was soul healing.

"But Bones..."

"There is nothing wrong with what you offer. With what you are... Were. And I miss that. I miss you, Booth. I miss you so much it hurts. But I don't know how to find you even though you're standing right in front of me. And I did that to you. I did that.

So yes. I love you. For real. No taking back. I loved you even when you loved Hannah. I love you even if you still love her. Even if you're mad at me. Even if you pity me. No taking back."

His finger under her chin, forgotten by the rest of his body, started a caress on that soft skin, a soothing motion for her frayed nerves. It released the hold they had on her. Her breathing came easier rather than ragged, the muscles on her face unclenched. Her heart slowed.

" And yes, I wish you loved me back.

"And yes, I regret many things, I regret telling you no back then. But I do not regret that night, because it was the only time I was really there for you. The only time I was ever allowed to do something for you. And the only thing I would have done differently would be the leaving. I should have stayed and we should have fought or yelled or... But I shouldn't have left all this time go by.

"But I'm here, Booth, I'm here and I'm waiting and I will do whatever you need and I'll wait all the time in the world.I will pay for my mistakes.

"A bird and fish may fall in love, Booth. And may have a life together because no one cares where they will live. Truth is, no fish can love a bird without being loved back.

"You said moments can be created.

"I'll tell you what? I'll create a moment for us now, OK. Look at me.

"I. Love. You.

"And if you don't take this moment, I will create more again. Until one of these days you decide not to miss it. Until one of these days you decide that I am worth it.

"I don't want to try, Booth. I want to succeed."

Sometime during her tirade, Brennan had forgotten to breathe. The air now came in painful gasps and it surprised her that the tears were free flowing by now, because she was not really upset, she was just bone deep sad and she did not cry at sad, because if she did, she would have been in a vale of tears on and off since she turned 15.

But Booth's finger was still doing that little rub under her chin and all of her body had relaxed and she was not the Brennan she knew and controlled. She was this new Brennan standing in front of a man asking him to let her love him.

.

.

His index finger was happy rubbing under her chin. His thumb cruised lazily over her parted lips. And what was it with his own lips that were opening in a born stupid smile? Why did it suddenly feel like he didn't have a care in the world?

Why was his body reacting to her like he hadn't just seen her pouring her heart out, going on a very lonely limb to make it better for him, hurting because he hadn't said a word to sooth her?

Nonetheless, his thumb stopped at the corner of her mouth and pressed in, penetrating her, tightening his hold on her chin, possessing her. He pushed in and out, caressing her, taking her.

Her body responded as if it were his hips pressing into her not merely a thumb.

There was a breathy gasp.

"Do you want this, Bones?" His voice was rough.

She sucked his thumb. She wanted it so very much.

.

.

Booth felt like a deer in the headlights. Her answer shocked him, gave him a feeling of dislocation. That she wanted him, that she trusted him still, after all...

He heard a growl, a low, low growl, akin to a lion's, coming from his throat. He pulled his thumb from her mouth and cruised it down her neck, her breastbone until it came to the buttons on her shirt.

"Bones... tell me to stop..." but his fingers slid the first button out of its hole and his body geared up to take her. "Please..."

The second little button opened, such an obedient little thing and her breath came ragged.

"If you don't tell me to stop now, I will take you right here, on this bed."

One. More. Button.

"I love you, Booth."

.

.

He was about to lose it, about to let it rip because the need had become such an urgent, violent thing. Weeks, months, years of yearning culminating in the little buttons standing between them.

He reeled it in, that violence.

One by one, he undid the small buttons, all of them, pushing her shirt aside, the act not so much an undressing, but an unveiling of her body.

That scent of hers, that breath. He leaned into her and he wanted to kiss her mouth, oh damn, did he ever, but he felt that he had to earn it, to work for it, pay for it. He kissed each ghost of each bruise he had left _that_ night. Where he had nipped and bitten, he kissed and soothed, working his way up her neck, her ear, her jaw. He was up to bursting point when he made it to her mouth, feeling like a man dying of thirst standing by the edge of the water.

And he drank. He drank from her mouth, from her body. There was no sating that thirst. But he could try. His hand slid behind her head and pulled her even closer to him, as if he could meld them together by the sheer intensity of that kiss.

His body rose from the crouching position at her feet and raised over her, pushing her into the bed. Her moan snapped him back, reeled him in.

He took a moment to study her, because this was not about his violent need.

Her face was flushed and her eyes closed and her lips swollen.

That night flashed before his eyes. He hadn't looked at her. He hadn't acknowledged her. It chilled him.

She opened her eyes at the absence of the contact.

"Booth?"

No sense revisiting the past. No sense at all.

It was a new smile, one she had never seen before and couldn't wait to see again.

"Touch me, Bones."

Her heart actually leaped. She had always considered that a load of nonsense for novels and romance and poetry but she felt it, she actually felt it, that surge of pleasure and emotion and recognition inside her chest.

Lying on her back, her whole field of vision was Booth.

Slowly, she undid his buttons, shy of touching his skin, because she had wanted it for so long it felt obscene to just go ahead and not have a ceremony before. But the warmth coming from his skin was so tempting, so inviting. Her palm pressed against his heart.

And she smiled.

Tonight, that heart beat just for her.

His shirt offered no resistance, his belt and his pants were agreeable too.

She studied him, naked in her bed, gloriously naked. She studied the skin, so soft, the muscles, so firm, roped around bones she knew, had mended over and over. He didn't shy away from her gaze. It was not about vanity, though he had plenty to feel proud of. It was about letting her have him too, it was about giving her willingly what he had denied her before. It was about vulnerability.

.

.

She smiled a private smile, one a woman gives a man when she knows that nothing stands between her and his body.

He took her dainty hands in his and invited her to touch.

When he couldn't take much more, when he was ready to explode, he peeled the rest of her clothes off and pulled her into his lap.

He wanted eye to eye, mouth to mouth, hand in hand.

When she slid around him, taking him in, he had a feeling of dejá vu, of returning home after the longest of absences.

The feeling that he had bit down on then, was the same one he marveled in now.

Like he belonged there. To her.

Her hands held on to his, and her hips rocked him.

The blood in his veins coursed to the rhythm of her heart.

"Look at me, Bones."

Her hands squeezed his, an embrace of sorts,

Her slow movements became slower. Her eyes opened to his, clouded though they were with pleasure.

He pulled both their entwined hands and laid them over his heart.

"Listen, Bones..."

"Yes..."

"It's that moment." His other hand snaked around her waist and stopped at the small of her back. He rubbed it softly. "I'm taking that moment, Bones"

Her heart choked for a moment, because things like this do not happen in real life, moments of intense, blinding happiness are reserved for fiction. And then he rubbed the small of her back again, and the fog of the tears dissipated. He plunged inside her again and she responded, and with each powerful stroke and with each firm retreat she came closer and closer and her heart pounded and pounded and it was as if the world could hear it, a proclamation that they had made it through, an edit of happiness because their "eventually" had come to pass.

Booth exploded inside her, a blaze of glory. His head snapped back and a scream tore from his throat as if it had been hiding there, just waiting, waiting for a moment like this.

His abandon, his head snapped back, his mouth open, his panting chest were enough to bring her to the brink. But what propelled her over the edge was far simpler.

"I love you, Bones." Her world exploded, bright white, burning hot, inside and outside of her.

Pure laughter exploded from her. Undiluted, unquestioned happiness. She laughed and the happiness was so blinding in her expression that Booth felt caught in that laughter, surprised because this? This was bliss. He pulled her to him, wrapped his arms around her ferociously and let that sound roll through him until he too couldn't help but laugh as well.

.

.

Booth had though it would be impossible to extricate himself from her body. And he didn't quite try for that first night. No thirst, no hunger, no exhaustion.

But the morning came and he woke up alone with her warm sheets tangled around his body. Alone in her bed.

Then he heard her sounds in the kitchen and then footsteps down the hall and then she walked into the room with two cups of steaming coffee.

She was naked and there were marks on her body. But they were marks left when he had held on for dear life. Those were marks of love, not of anger.

He had them too.

She gave as good as she got.

He took the first sip of coffee and burned his tongue.

He pulled her to him with his free hand and covered them with the comforter.

"I've missed you."

"You were asleep when I went to get the coffee, Booth."

"I mean that I missed you, before tonight. I missed us."

She gave him a smug little smile.

"Some things are meant to be Bones, that's all I'm saying."

She laughed.

"Yes. Even if it takes a couple of tries to get there."


End file.
